The Internet has emerged as, a large community of electronically-connected users located around the world who readily and regularly exchange significant amounts of information. The Internet continues to serve its original purpose of providing access and exchange of information among government agencies, laboratories, and universities for research and education. In addition, the Internet has evolved to serve a variety of interests and forums that extend beyond its original goals.
There is growing interest in electronic commerce, whereby individuals and/or entities can transact business with other individuals and/or entities via interconnected networks, such as the Internet. Electronic commerce offers advantages to both buyers and vendors. With electronic commerce, a buyer may access many more vendors than could be achieved via conventional methods of commerce. Thus, with electronic commerce, buyers can potentially achieve a lower purchase price, as well as a wider selection of goods and/or services. By the same token, electronic commerce affords vendors a larger market place, and access to a larger number of buyers.
Much of the electronic commerce presently conducted between buyers and vendors occurs by the exchange of data in the form of graphics and/or text. Typically, a buyer seeking to purchase goods and/or services electronically initiates the transaction by first establishing a data link with the vendor. For example, if the vendor possesses a web site on the World-Wide Web portion of the Internet, the buyer initially makes a connection via a computer, to an Internet Service Provider. Once connected, the buyer then enters the Universal Resource Locator (URL) associated with the vendor to access that vendor's web site. After the buyer has accessed the vendor's web site, the buyer enters the information needed to complete the transaction.
Today, the Internet is widely utilized in connection with the sale of financial products. Financial institutions, such as banks and insurance companies, provide online financial product information for browsing by the customer. For a majority of financial products, online purchasing is fairly straightforward. Once the customer has decided to purchase a particular product, he or she is required to enter personal information upon a series of forms in order to complete the transaction.
However, some financial products are subject to specialized legal requirements which makes conducting an online transaction more difficult. Such laws typically require the customer to review and sign one or more State mandated forms in order to purchase financial products, such as annuities. Known systems have dealt with this requirement by allowing the customer to download required forms so that he or she may print each form as a hard copy and sign each by hand. The forms are then sent to the financial institution by regular mail so that the transaction may be consummated.
Other known systems, such as that described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,233,565, allow for the submission of true digital signatures. Unfortunately, this method requires both the vendor and the customer to obtain and utilize specialized authentication software in order to complete the transaction. There remains a need for a system and method of facilitating the online purchase of financial products that allows the customer to consummate financial transactions without the use of specialized authentication software.
Further, each State of the United States promulgates its own rules regarding which annuities State residents may purchase and how such purchases must be consummated. There remains a need for a system and method of facilitating the online purchase of products capable of 1) determining an online customer's State of residence, 2) identifying which products may be purchased by the online customer given the customer's State of residence, 3) providing the customer with online forms having a substantially identical appearance to those mandated by applicable State law and 4) providing a method of consummating online transactions that does not require the buyer to obtain specialized equipment.